With over 1.7 million page views, Le Noeud Papillon's blog continues to provide lovers of bow ties with unique stories and content relating to menswear through interviews with industry icons and vignettes into topics relating to suits, shirts, shoes, ties, designers, weavers and much more.

Want to search the blog for something or someone you've heard about? Use the search bar below to search for all related content.

Google Le Noeud Papillon's Blog

Translate This Blog

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Our Pleasure Is Your Pleasure, The Scents We Use In Dispatching Your Treasures

For myself the great pleasures in life come from turning on my senses and conversely from switching them off. There is a great joy in using touch, smell, sight, sound and taste to explore and derive pleasure from the world. However, too much of anything is also not a good thing and after a while the same things repeated over and over, though first appearing pleasurable, in fact become a sort of hell on earth. Conversely, the other great pleasure I derive from the world is switching off all my senses when I meditate. It's probably incorrect to say that you are switching them off because in a meditative state I feel highly aware of my surroundings but I am not listening to anything, my eyes are closed, my hands feel numb, my mouth is not tasting anything at all. It seems like a strange dichotomy therefore that my two states of happiness are polar opposites, the one requiring me to explore my senses, the other requesting me to let go of them completely. Happiness, I would imagine, is therefore being at peace with both states of nature and everything in between.

I would be lying to you if I said that smell was my favourite sense. It's a combination of smell and taste that I find most enthralling. The smell of fresh bread that has then been toasted with fresh tomatoes, fresh basil and olive oil, marinated feta cheese, the crunch, the squish, the swirl, the swallow. Mayonnaise on crumbed veal schnitzel and smashed avocado inside the freshest bread roll with a crunchy exterior, a pasta laden with shaved black truffles and truffle pecorino and a cracked egg swirled through it. Yes, yes, this is what ignites me! ....And, unfortunately it has taken a toll on my physical appearance.

One aspect that we have added to the delivery of our bow ties is the use of scent. A bow tie is something wonderful to receive and we have our smooth surfaced wonderful boxes with shiny foil logo which are purposely designed for them, then there is the braille like touch of the red foil seal on the instruction card contrasted with the smoothness of the cream paper stock. It's appealing to the eyes as well as to the hand. The bow tie itself is mixture of smooth or textured silk but then it has the contours which glide through your hand and finished with the hard and solid feel of the smooth edges of polished nickel or gold on the clips. The box is finished with a slippery ribbon of shiny navy satin and gold foil logo. But what of the smell? If we sent it out just like that your nose would only read the faint smell of the cardboard.

Enter my nose. Every now and then when I am in the city I hit the perfume counters at the boutiques and in the department stores and I look for the scents of the season. Over the last three years the ones that stand out are the ones that we use in our packs. They are as follows:

Tom Ford, Mandarino D'Amalfi:

The salesman Luca at Harrolds sold me this Tom Ford scent when he said 'have you been to the Amalfi, si? Well, then you will know it smells just like these mandarins". SOLD. With a story like that how could I deny my customers. It is really just a wonderfully fresh and citrus like scent.

Hermes, Terre D'Hermes:

The woody and I would say somewhat Morroccan spicy feel that I get from this scent makes me feel like I am on the set of a James Bond film set somewhere in Egypt with Agent XXX in a stunning ball gown next to me trying to find a boat that will sail us further down the Nile.

Creed, Virgin Island Water:

If ever I died at went to heaven and heaven was a tropical place then I would request that my bartender was Bryan Brown (though I would mute him), I would make Elizabeth Shue my girlfriend, the band would be the Beach Boys playing Kokomo alternating with The Models playing Barbardos, I would have a large pina colada in my hand with a white pyjama shirt, a pair of loose board shorts and I would have a large spray of Virgin Island Water permanently drizzling down my hairy chest. That's how it would have to be.

The Sale continues, although we are running low on the scents it seems...